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AR15.COM
2/25/2010 4:08:45 AM EDT
Ok, so when Napoleon is defeated (1815 or so) he's sent off into exile at Elba.

why didn't they just kill him?
2/25/2010 2:30:49 PM EDT
[#1]
I believe he was sent off to Elba but didnt he return to fight at Waterloo.
2/25/2010 3:56:29 PM EDT
[#2]
Quoted:
Ok, so when Napoleon is defeated (1815 or so) he's sent off into exile at Elba.

why didn't they just kill him?


Killing POW's isnt exactly an accepted method of dealing with enemy combatants, atleast not in the 19th centuary. Although you could say there were some unethical practices performed by the French army in Spain, just becuase Napoleon crowned himsef emperor didnt give them a right to simply murder the man.
2/25/2010 6:58:43 PM EDT
[#3]
Like Themosticles, he threw himself on the hearth of the British homeland and asked for mercy.  They gave him exile in St. Helena along with some arsenic to quicken his death.  Vive l'Empereur!
2/25/2010 9:09:55 PM EDT
[#4]
Napoleon was Emperor of France.  That made him "royalty" of a sort.

Royals seldom have other royals executed.

He got away from Elba, so they sent him farther away, to St. Helena.


Steve
2/28/2010 4:54:36 PM EDT
[#5]
What Steve said.

Except in battle (and often by mistake)......royals don't whack royals. The entire point of medieval warfare when it came to knights-vs-knights was, whenever possible, to capture the other guy for ransom (happened to King Richard of England, among others).

Napoleon may have started off a nobody but he "earned" his emperorship conquering Europe the hard way.
3/1/2010 8:43:31 PM EDT
[#6]
Quoted:
What Steve said.

Except in battle (and often by mistake)......royals don't whack royals. The entire point of medieval warfare when it came to knights-vs-knights was, whenever possible, to capture the other guy for ransom (happened to King Richard of England, among others).

Napoleon may have started off a nobody but he "earned" his emperorship conquering Europe the hard way.


executing captains was never the practice
3/2/2010 9:22:25 AM EDT
[#7]
But...it's happened. As have mass slaughters (see Crecy) and random executions.

Whacking royalty however.....rare.
3/10/2010 7:42:17 PM EDT
[#8]
Quoted:
But...it's happened. As have mass slaughters (see Crecy) and random executions.

Whacking royalty however.....rare.


And they didn't want France and/or Italy to become to the Allies what Spain had been for Napoleon himself.  A wise choice considering how the French swept his much less compitent grandnephew to the throne and threw away the Second Republic in the 1850s